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Members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

By Rick Berman

If there’s one lesson we’ve learned from the economic crisis, it’s that bad investments have devastating consequences. In the free market, of course, we can fire our financial adviser if they lose our money or spend it in ways we don’t approve. If we have a stock or investment that isn’t performing, we’re able to sell it off. Unfortunately for union members, it doesn’t work the same way when their union is letting them down.

Unions demand “investments” from their members in the form of dues. These dues often go to partisan politics that benefit officeholders and regulators—not necessarily union members. In 2008, labor unions spent $75 million in political donations, with 92 percent of it going to Democrats. In 2010, over 93 percent of union political support went to Democrats, even though 42 percent of union households voted Republican, according to exit-polling data. You don’t have to be an analyst to guess where their money will go in 2012.

Why don’t union members just find new representation like the rest of us? It’s virtually impossible to fire a union. The decertification process is rife with opportunities for intimidation and full of technicalities that unfairly favor the union. The NLRB reports that only 26 percent of decertification attempts are ultimately successful.

Fortunately, a solution has been put forth in the form of the Employee Rights Act (ERA), a bill cosponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Ut.) and Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). The ERA extends guarantees to union members in the private sector like paycheck protection and regular recertification elections.

Paycheck protection measures would ensure that members have a say in whether their dues money is spent on political purposes. The provision commands the support of nearly 80 percent of union households, according to a recent poll conducted by ORC International.

Voters are getting wise to the role of union leadership in holding back our economy and pulling workers’ purse strings, and employees are in growing agreement that today’s unions are a prohibitively bad investment.

Union membership itself is on the decline—down from 33.2 percent in 1956 to 11.8 percent in 2011. Even Facebook’s stock hasn’t gone down that much. If you noticed that one of your investments was floundering, would you get rid of it, or go down with the ship?

The ERA would allow current employees to vote once every three years and reaffirm that they do, in fact, want the union to represent them exclusively. Think of it as the opt-in or opt-out period for your 401k. If Democrats and Republicans have to convince the electorate every few years to represent them, why don’t unions give their members the same automatic right to vote for reelection—especially when 93% of those paying for the representation never had a vote on whether to form their union in the first place.

In Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker made it easier for employees to opt out of state government unions, the American Federation of Teachers lost over a third of its members last year. Between March 2011 and February of this year, Wisconsin’s second-largest public-sector union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, saw half of its members head for the exit door.

Republicans and Democrats disagree on a host of issues, but we’re now seeing broad agreement that our current system of labor laws and regulations is fundamentally broken. Regulatory oversight run by political appointees is damaging the economy and the free market—picking winners and losers based on political agendas instead of good policy.